Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Our students have great
potentialities, most of them, a vast majority of them! If you’re a principal or
a head teacher also you should learn that your colleagues have big
potentialities too!

We’ve got to discover and find them!

If we trust in people –
students or teachers – and we give them responsibilities and some chances of
having initiatives, they usually respond well, and they will take up those
tasks, those assigned tasks. As if they were something of their own. And they’ll
embody that common project.

I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it in many many cases along
my career as a teacher. It’s something great. Both if the students are teens or
grown-ups. We teachers will have to encourage our students and explain things
well to them.

Of course we can encounter cases when kids don’t seem to be on
our side, but when we treat them aside, one by one, they react well. What I mean
is that people, persons have great potentialities and capabilities. Sometimes they
won’t meet our expectations but they at least will face the issue willingly.

If
we treat people a bit better than they are or seem to be, they for sure will improve,
as students, as teachers, as persons. / Photo from: openingdoor Embrace Grace
Blog. We will discover and find many beautiful “sceneries” in our students for
example, if we open the “right door”. We teachers have something of coaches
too.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Classroom
management can be applied even at this long the school year is by showing
ourselves teachers as serious persons.

I mean we can get serious in the face
and gestures, as if something important would be going on, which is the case!

Also by showing silence and gazing and staring at our students. Not saying
much. Silence may be pretty eloquent. This kind of classroom management not
only does concern the respect owed to us teachers but also to the student him
or herself.

We apply classroom management because as well we want to respect
our students, and we wish to form and educate students at their professional
work, which is being competent students. Students are not born by knowing how
to be a competent student, but we have to help them become those serious
workers of their job as students.

In the classroom there will be silence and
peacefulness: that’s precisely the kind of atmosphere our students need to
carry out their job as students. Alike we can address a few students when
they’re starting to misbehave: we’ll say their names plus silence and gazing at
them in their faces.

As I said we can do this even now that we’re somewhat
close to the end of the school year and with the big exams around the corner,
as Angela Watson puts. / Photo from: Stockworld

Sunday, April 23, 2017

We teachers have a lot
to say to our students, their families and all humankind. Also if we’re
Christians.

A lot of people live as if God our dear Father would not exist. And
he does! A friend of mine doesn’t believe in God and the poor man lives as if
we human people would be the victims of fate. And that’s not the case at all. I respect my friend a lot, and listen to him. And
that transcendent stuff can be said and shown in our everyday teaching and working.

We teachers
are or may be great humanists, and have the elixir of happiness or may have it.
A creature, a person, who listens to our teaching can feel comforted because of
our competent working, and trying our dear students would learn a lot of useful
things for their lives as citizens of this our dear western world. I’m
referring to both knowledge and abilities as well.

We teachers don’t confine
our work to just fulfilling a report or chart we have to show to our boss: we
can have a great soul with plenty of human ideals.

By the way, and in spite of
maybe seeing our students as the opposite, our young people are living the
period for great and grand ideals. Of generosity, solidarity, cheerfulness, a
tremendous sentiment of wishing to live…

Our students’ potentialities are
pretty great, and we have to channel them: to extract all the strength and
force that live in their interiors, plus love: tell me what young person, young
man or young woman, doesn’t have the ideal of a perpetual, authentic and
genuine love, though in the surface they may be showing something different. /
Photo from: Girl watching the sunset on the beach www zastavki com

I’ve been resting
for some time with my family. Now I’d like to say something in favor of women.

First
premise: I learn quite much from my female students. They have some
perspicacity men don’t have, or not at the same level. They learn and acquire
English in a particular way, from which I can learn a lot.

They have their love
for specific details and little things a lot of men don’t have, or again not at
the same level. If you saw the details I encounter in them, you’d gain a vision
which is beautiful.

I could say many positive points about them. By the way,
all my current students, and also within a few months, are adults. More things
can be said in their favor. They also have a shrewdness and perception as well
men have at a different level.

You have to count on them and on their opinions.
Regards young students, teens and children, on the other hand, I prefer to have
lessons for boys and lessons for girls. Many teachers I’ve met coincide in the
same way and vision. Well, it’s just some more option. We’re so complementary, men
and women at many, many other aspects. / Photo from: New York Daily News

I'm a bit resting today. I have a lot to say on coming posts. Today I wanted, as I said, to rest and to express my love for Ireland and her people and her folk-lore. - I think I've been to the castle on the picture: I guess it's Cashell, is that right? It's in the center of the island, a bit to the west. My family roots come from the north of Spain, Cantabria namely, where the Celts settled a zillion years ago and whose landscape resembles Ireland in some way. / Photo from: helloireland com

Saturday, April 22, 2017

We foreign or
second language teachers need to learn the vocabulary of that language, if we’re
non-native.

We need the words to communicate in that tongue, English in my case and
my students’. Also in order to teach it.

What can we do? For example reading a
text with new vocabulary, from the Web, from novels, etc. The fact of looking
up a word in the dictionary or using an online dictionary like Wordreference
and thinking of that word makes you learn English vocabulary. An action like
that – looking up the word – makes you learn the word. And if you see that word
again, later on, it will ring a bell to you and it will be easier to retain and
learn.

You’ll be learning a rather vast lexis! With practice and continuity, of
course. That’s an example of a learning strategy, you may have others. Over time
you’ll find you’ve learned a vast lexis, and you’ll be able to teach an ample
vocab to your students too. The teacher can give what he has, and not what he
doesn’t. If he knows many words his students more likely will learn many words
too. / Photo from: WallpaperCave. The picture is just a nice illustration.

Friday, April 21, 2017

I’m reading an
interesting book about what Pope Francis is doing in favor of immigrants, the
homeless, girls that may fall in prostitution networks… He has done quite a lot
for them and keeps doing things for them.

Something else could be done by us
teachers.

I live in Europe, the target and finish of many immigrants that
travel across the Mediterranean Sea to find something better than in their
origin-countries, submerged in endemic wars. Many of them die on the way here. Something
may be done.

For example I know many teachers and young people that invest
their free time by doing things in favor of for example the elderly: old people
that live rather lonely. And they are doing something great!

Summer is coming,
and also I know teachers who are volunteering for English camps for boys or for
girls, and that’s great too. Also some of those teachers are assisting at urban
summer camps, as well by doing things for kids, like for instance teaching English
as a foreign language.

Maybe we can plan our summer by also doing something for
other people. We can dedicate time to our families, of course, plus
volunteering for some nice enterprise.

And something specific we can also do is
carrying out our professional work the best we can do: that’s the first
priority. I mean: by doing our job better than what legally is indebted to us. I know many of you do it so.

And
as well what I’m telling you on the last posts: receiving and accepting our
students with attention and affection – doing more than what is owed to us as teachers.
Anyway I know most of you teachers are doing your best and fulfilling your
duties as very committed teachers, because you’re the ones that drop past blogs
for teachers too! / Photo from: Learning-English-in-Ireland Teach Ezi. The picture
might show a young person among the many ones that volunteer at their free
time.

We teachers have
some or many students, okay. But each student is unique and worthy to pay
attention to, as you know.

Let’s treat our students with tenderness and
affection, for they could have so few people around who could love them. This
doesn’t prevent from firmness concerning classroom management. What is more,
attention, affection, even some kind of clever and intelligent tenderness are
great boosters of a sane classroom management: when we love, with benevolence
love, our students, in the long term, will respect us.

And not too much in the
long term – also in short.

Now I’m thinking of a summer course we ran in a
school of Jaén, south of Spain. It was a program that offered remedies for
students who had failed many subjects along the school year, before final September
exams. Okay, those boys had a lot of hours of classes and studying at the large
study hall or the classrooms.

Discipline was rather wooden, do you say so? And
those boys and young men, whom you might find they could be so troublesome,
when they encountered tutoring sessions with a teacher, if that teacher received
each student in an open and affectionate way those poor students saw heaven
open: I mean they greatly appreciated affection and listening to their problems
and choking anxieties – for example some of them suffered from broken families,
drugs, adaptation and adjustment problems.

The students lived in the school, so
they had few relationships with people outside, except on weekends. One of
those courses was my first job, in 1993 summer. By the way, we male teachers
should have a prudent and delicate attention to girls: there should not be any
gossip at the school. / Photo from: Urban teachers. The pic shows a smiling
teacher.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Thinking about our
lessons, in a peaceful and tranquil way may be pretty sensible. Something I carry
out sometimes is strolling along a park or the countryside, and while I’m doing
so I think of my students with ample lenses, trying to think what else they can
do at their learning and acquiring English as a foreign language. Also I think
of the lesson plans themselves. For example lately I’ve thought of insisting on
learning strategies in the classroom, having my students ponder about those
techniques, and why we do such and such activities in the lessons. As well I think
of how much they can give from themselves and which the goals should be, as I said,
with more ample lenses. It’s kind of dreaming high about what they can give. I said
I do this sometimes: actually walking along someplace I do it rarely (but a few
times anyway), and what I do more regularly is thinking and meditating about my
students and our classes, short it may be though. I do so because I can think
of higher goals about them all. By the way also I wanted to tell you today that
considering ourselves as children of God can prepare us ourselves to face
likely troubles and problems we can encounter in life and teaching. It may
constitute a relaxing thing, alike because we can make prayer, this is, talking
to and with him, as he loves us pretty much. / Photo from: Landscape

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Some weeks ago I
watched a video in the Internet about the educative school company where I
taught in Jaén, southern Spain, and I got stunned: I saw a girl aged 12 or 13 from
the female school of the city plus a young man from the male school speaking in
fluent English, and it was all amazing, like they were totally bilingual.

As a
matter of fact more and more students of that institution can do so, and in
many other Spanish schools too: the overall thing in Spain is changing, and on the
street you can hear more English than twenty years ago, definitely.

When I taught
at that male school I didn’t make immersion in English, but now I would do it:
it’s the only way our students can learn the tongue and also acquire it.

Acquiring a foreign or second language entails and implies unconscious gaining
the language in a particular atmosphere where the students are exposed to that
tongue. We teachers have to create immersion in the classroom: that room is a
piece of an English-speaking country, let’s say, and as well we teachers should
talk in Shakespeare’s language before and after the lesson: remember the classroom
is a place where that language is the vehicle one for communication.

And
besides all this is beautiful and I like it so much: beauty is educative for
our students! / Photo from: wallup net. I think the picture is from Ireland.

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

So we have that the
teacher has to smile. Also he has to thank his students for small services,
like erasing the chalkboard or picking up a piece of paper. With this elegance
he is pushing toward the direction of a sensible classroom management.

On the
previous post I mentioned God, as the basement which we can rely on. He’s in
love with each person, and has a limitless affection of a great dad and a great
mom, even more, more than all dads and moms together, of course.

And the
teacher also has to ask for forgiveness. Before I thought this would subtract
authority to me the teacher, and that’s not the case. Even that action could
reinforce our authority as teachers.

Once I was told by the deputy head teacher
or subdirector to ask for forgiveness to a kid I had applied a serious
punishment on or something kind of that. This was reactive to me: I was
discovering a new and fresh attitude in the classroom that works: it makes the
teacher-student relationship more humane.

And alike the teacher should ask for
permission. I know a teacher that asks for permission to his students when he
has to verify or check out a student’s notebook, textbook or tablet. Politeness
is so great! Treating our students nice as well reinforces our authority,
because our students may feel they’re treated with exquisite respect, and they
may think all that is something so serious! Bad manners are never nice. / Photo
from: Irish Countryside WallpaperCave. I adore Ireland :-)

I insist on purpose: we teachers should smile. I told you about this on the previous post,
#3160.

The teacher has to accept, listen to, receive, morally embrace his
students. It could happen, the kid could have his smiling teacher as the only
smiling person around.

This is perfectly compatible with classroom management
and discipline. Even more, smiling can be very encouraging and classroom
managing, because it shows the teacher has the classroom control. He should be
joyful and optimistic.

I can tell you all my optimism leans on the strong
potentialities of the human person plus the deep and firm basement of leaning
and turning to God.

Many kids, well, every kid, or grown-ups too, need a
stimulating person around. For this purpose also we have to make lessons very
participative. Politeness and elegance make the rest, regarding classroom
management.

Plus fortitude, because the teacher has also to correct his students,
telling them the truth and what’s upright, honest and honorable. Correcting
apart and aside I mean, never in public, although we must be firm at cutting
off any misbehavior rising point. So as you all can see the teacher needs
fortitude, which is gained with effort and repetition of actions: each
fortitude action is a victory! And never sour or vinegary faces around! If we
fall at this point, never mind: let’s rectify and carry on with the lesson! /
Photo from: ThoughtCo

Monday, April 17, 2017

The teacher could talk or
present a point from his subject by smiling, which can be elegant and
encouraging, but turning into a serious look if there arise some misbehavior.
What I mean is that smiling can be even classroom-managing, and it might show
the teacher has the class-control in his hands. But if you think that a serious
look is better, there you are.

Also politeness by the teacher, like thanking
some small service by a student can sow a sane and upright classroom
management. Plus the way we dress can help: it’s up to you, evidently, but an
elegant “façade” may also help managing the classroom, and I’m now thinking of
a teacher we had when I was some 14 years old. He was elegant and a smile was
all the time on his face: he imposed respect, and he was kind and nice with us
his students.

And he did nothing special for managing us as students. Even his
lessons were interesting and said something special to us teens…; I mean you
finished the lesson by thinking, Okay it’s been interesting to listen to him! He
gave himself to us: that might be his secret, the secret of feeling happy! /
Photo from:resized stan and car Prewarcar. The picture is a nice illustration
for the post.

Saturday, April 15, 2017

I have some stuff
for posting, but today I wanted to write about something necessary both for the
teacher and for the students, which is resting and relaxing. All that’s also
one teacher’s duty, because amid other reasons the teacher has to spend long
with his family and recover strength for next battle.

By the way I pray God for
peace in so many countries.

As I was saying he should stay and remain with his
family. In Spain for example we’ve had – where I live, in Granada – some short
vacations or holidays, celebrating the Holy Week plus Easter.

I was also
thinking that the teacher has to learn how to keep his family in peace and
harmony: it’d be strange a teacher would be able to pacify the classroom and
not his own home… And this harmony passes alike through politeness at home:
thanking the helping out, asking for in a nice and kind way, etc.

And concerning
the spouses I could say that there should be communication between them two, for instance
when their kids are already in bed or they could “get lost” for some hours or a
few days to live for each other and have enough and sufficient time for talking
about them two.

I’d say quite many things about communication in the marriage
but I’d write about it on other posts, and I’ve had so on other posts. Anyway, and
this is pretty important: there should be communication within the marriage: it
would be awkward and kind of dangerous the husband would inform about a family problem
to his female secretary instead of his wife.

A friend of mine used to say one’s
secretary should be mature at age and rather old – I’m sorry but I don’t have
many words to express what I mean in English, my target language; I can’t write
enough nuances, but you may understand what I mean.

Have a happy Easter, all of
you readers and TeacherLingo! / Photo from: biking-on-hilton-head-island Hilton
Head Island. Oh, that pic might show a marriage plan while they “get lost” for
some hours, maybe someplace known by the rest of the family, but for them two
to keep alone and talk between them two about their relationships as spouses.

Friday, April 14, 2017

How to train oneself for
exams and tests? Daily. Every single day. That’s the answer. I mean: through
classes and personal work and studying. And the teacher will help his students
by telling them about adequate learning strategies, plus the ones the very
students will apply or otherwise discard, if they aren’t useful.

As I’ve said
somewhere else many students, on their own, don’t know how to prepare
themselves for exams of English as a foreign or second language. Because the
thing is different as in History or math for example.

They take their textbooks
or tablets or iPads and… so what? Well the thing is different in these two
latter cases, because those electronic devices can nicely help to practice for
an exam and they are interactive.

What if the textbook is a printed book?

I
knew a student, more than thirty years ago, who one day, when already tired of
not knowing how to deal with his English textbook, he took it and… started to
carefully and willingly read the texts and stories of the characters of his
book, and took some more interest in those stories and began to read the texts,
which contained grammar patterns, and that student took the stories and read
them twice, thrice, trying to enjoy and understand them, and… his grades
started also to improve, and he got able to use those grammar patterns for
communication, plus that vocabulary too, and his grades became better and
better.

Nobody had taught him how to do it. He was his own teacher. And his
real English-language teachers over years recognized his effort and change: he
even was able to write compositions and essays, with fewer and fewer mistakes,
and also was able to read and understand and enjoy his first novel in English: Animal Farm.

And in the end he got
“sobresaliente”, which in Spain is the highest grade. We teachers could save and
prevent from this long pathway to our students, but ultimately, it’s them who
will have to learn on their own, together with their classmates’ and teachers’
assistance and help, for instance by learning strategies from their classmates
and teachers.

So as to finish, let’s one day take the textbook to the classroom
and let’s elicit from the students how to face its studying and how to learn
from it. More and more our students in the classroom will try to suggest the best
ways to tackle that interesting book.

/ Photo from: country_house_2-wallpaper-3840x2160
medhaindia com. The picture might show a house typical of a story, like the
ones our students could maybe find in their textbooks. Studying from books and
the Internet is great and we have to convince our students about that point! A
teacher can be the most appropriate person to teach about how to study and
learn, because he’s an expert in those mental operations and techniques!

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Exam and test
contents should not be a surprise for our students, something unexpected.

Exams
and tests should assess and evaluate our students’ knowledge and practical
competences. I’m focusing on English as a foreign language, but what I’m saying
could be useful for other school subjects.

Okay then, our exams and tests
should, above all, assess our students’ communicative competences. Grammar and
vocab are means, tools, instruments for communication. And their contents (of exams
and tests) and their kinds of exercises should be very similar, even equal to
the ones we will have done in classes.

When teaching kids I used to include
vocabulary activities, grammar exercises, writing an essay or composition, all
biased to rather showing the communicative competences my students had or
should have accomplished. Those tests assessed reading and writing skills,
sometimes also listening, while I assessed speaking along the year, both with
short answers or topics my students had to convey.

When I was a rookie teacher,
the first test I applied to my dear students was a complete failure, and they
could have not expected at all the types of exercises they had to carry out –
they were rather college-difficulty exercises: even the best students crushed
at all. This was close to twenty-five years ago, when I started my career as a
teacher.

The level was intermediate but my test, the very first one was, like
is aid, college-difficulty-level. Now it’s a story or anecdote. My students
could have not prepared themselves for such a test. Nor could they carry out
those activities. Something else to comment on is how to practice and study for
English exams and tests, but I hope I’ll be able to write about that tomorrow
or soon anyway.

By the way, I said on post #3148 that Grecian women were
educated as wives and mothers, and they evidently didn’t work out. I want to
say that being wives and mothers was and is something great too. / Photo from: jaidyn-reading-a-book-1-portrait-of-young-woman-karen-whitworth
Fine Art America. The picture is just a nice illustration.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Some quick advice about
classroom management? Let’s try to implement and apply interesting activities,
which are meaningful for our students.

Also let’s look in their eyes, when
addressing them, like combing all the class of students while talking to them. As
well let’s stop talking when we detect somebody is distracted or they’re chattering
among them. Silence can be very eloquent.

The point is roping our students with
the activity we’re carrying out, and praising, gently, their right answers, not
too much anyway.

Addressing each student when talking and combing all the class
of students may be helpful.

Now something about learning strategies. One key
strategy for our students is trying they would connect and relate new knowledge
with things they’ve already learned. Let’s comment on this point to our
students, and let’s give them examples.

For instance connecting present perfect
in English, our target language, with present simple, which they may have
already mastered. And explain their difference of meaning and usage.

Young children
may take longer time to learn things because they may not have previous
knowledge with which to connect. But often we can give them examples about
things they already know.

I have other points to post about, on coming days. One
way to cooperate with countries and nations that have conflicts and wars? Let’s
carry out our work in a competent way, plus let’s treat foreign students with
affection and attention, wherever they’re from.

That’s only a tip for those
countries: hopefully we can do other things: praying, alms, cooperation with a
project about one of those countries, helping the homeless by writing a letter
to the city-hall or mayor and suggesting some solution and calling the attention,
helping out at some charity, visiting the poor or the elderly... But let’s
start with our competent daily work! / Photo from: Pinterest

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

I’m lately saying
students must be the protagonists of classes. Also the teacher, of course. This
latter one should teach his students to learn how to learn.

The students’ job
is studying, learning and working. So they should be taught how to learn. Someone
taught me how to be a teacher. They should be taught their profession.

Even more
in the case of English as a foreign language: when exams and tests are around
the corner the students will study harder… but they may not know what to study
or how to do it.

They need learning strategies. We can in the lesson ask how high-achiever
students learn, and maybe we teachers can suggest further learning strategies:
organizing their work, planning it, summarizing, drawing conclusions, revising and
reviewing, receiving feedback about their learning, drawing the main points
about a grammar pattern, practicing the communicative competence by writing,
reading for the gist, for the main points, understanding a word from the
context, practicing the communicative competence of speaking in the classroom,
scanning or skimming a text, communicating with other people…

We have to bear
in mind, while teaching, that we have to make our students autonomous learners.
They must become aware about their own learning, taking up the strategies that
work and discarding the ones that don’t.

They must wish to learn, in a free
way: they learn because they want to! / Photo from: British Council take an
exam. Well the girl on the picture looks mature enough

Monday, April 10, 2017

The students I have in
my classes have to be the protagonists of their own learning, crystal clear.

I will
– after Easter short vacations – talk with them in the classroom. They’re
grown-ups. With one group I’ll speak in English with them, while with the other
group (lower English level) I’ll do it in Spanish, our common mother language.

Currently
they’re all the students I have. I’m a part-time teacher.

And I’ll ask them why
we carry out such and such activities in the classroom. The point is for them
to become kind of more active students – they already are but they can be more
active or more protagonists, or maybe more aware, and that’s it.

As well I’ll
draw some conclusions about the activities they prefer, and maybe the ones they
do not like that much. I will do it.

Let’s see what they want to tell me. I want
for them to be more aware about why we carry out those activities they seem to
like quite much. For learning English – learning and acquiring too – I implement
activities to exploit some worksheets I compose: reading, understanding, maybe
listening comprehension, discussions about the worksheets topics or from points
that have been treated on those nice worksheets...

They’re so good students that
they’re looking forward to receiving a new worksheet, at least up to some
extent. / Photo from: Beautiful-office-computer 4-designer com

One teacher, some
time ago, told me that he had to be honest and sincere with me. He told me he
did all – planning his classes, working hard, etc. – because he loved God above
all, and his students as well and also for God.

I liked what he told me.

He also
tried to love his colleagues, and the parents and families. He alike told me
all this didn’t prevent him from trying to carry out his work with technical
efficiency.

I insist on purpose: he was a good teacher, a competent one, and
tried to work fine.

Ok, on my behalf, I can tell you I have other points and
posts to tell you all, and I hope they’ll be helpful and useful to all of you. For
example I’ve got something about the point that our students have to be the
protagonists of their learning and so also of our lessons – this doesn’t impede
nor block that the teacher also is a protagonist in the classroom.

Should the
students not be the protagonists of lessons there would not be progress at
their learning…! I’ll tell you more on coming posts. / Photo from: Brigita-Lithuania
ISA

Saturday, April 8, 2017

We teachers can help
our students in these rather hard times. They’re times of crisis, because crisis
etymologically means “change”, and these times are times of changes.

Anyway, I was
going to write about another point. And it could help these crisis times.

We teachers,
as anybody else, have faults and defects. Ok, we can’t hide nor conceal them,
before our students. I mean, our defects are transmitted through our conducting
in the classroom and out of the classroom.

We have the duty of behaving in an
honest, honorable and upright way: we set an example, both we want or we don’t
want it. Be tranquil: our struggle to be better also is transmitted through our
conducting, both regarding the subject we teach – English in my case – and regarding
our trying to be better persons.

Let’s be nice at home with our families too,
cooperating actively to create a lovely atmosphere. Let’s also be nice at
school, prone to help and assist our students in their needs. Let’s be easy to
listen to our students: whatever they want to tell us is important for them.

And
alike let’s be prone to detect any possible anxiety among our students: they
may have problems at home, they may suffer in the classroom because they cannot
learn as quick as their classmates, they may feel bored because they think they’re
not learning new things about their communicative competence at speaking in
English, they may feel bullying, they may be foreigners or have some family in
Syria (I’m thinking of two of the students I’ve had along these years), etc.
Let’s look in their faces, for any possible restraining of anxiety. / Photo
from: The Year of Living Englishly Wordpress com. The picture is just a nice
illustration.

Friday, April 7, 2017

Creativity at
teaching. Essential. Think of it. Teaching that is not creative is not
teaching.

But be easy, for you have many possibilities and chances of being
creative at teaching, since you’re a committed teacher that passes by blogs
about teaching, and stops to read posts.

Also because any person is a principle
of creation. So he or she are creative teachers. Also because each teacher, as
each student, is unique, and I believe in your potential to teach in a creative
way. I believe in you, in each teacher.

And even more over your career years. The
more veteran a teacher is the more creative he can be. But also let’s be
careful we don’t innovate at all. A good teacher has to improve his teaching. As
he can see the effects of his teaching on his students. I mean, if he sees his
students are happier and happier, he’s on the right pathway.

He tries – more specifically
– each and every of his students would learn and progress as learners and
persons. And this entails happiness, which is the ultimate goal of our
teaching.

Even more, we can think that every single person must reach a
transcendent happiness. Or in other words we can count on a transcendent view
of every person, and this is fulfilled when that person – because of his
transcendence – treats God.

Something more practical? Well, what said before is
something practical: speaking to and with God as our Father. But also I could
tell you: plan next lessons, with your students in mind, plus their needs and
expectations, their particular ones, plus just their ways of being, and you’re
over the right pathway again. I believe in you! / Photo from: where-to-wait-at-traffic-light_thumb
London Cyclist. The picture shows a scenery that for many people can be daily:
I’m referring to regular average teachers and students on my posts.

Although we’re about
more than the middle of the school year something about classroom-management
should be said. Angela Watson posted something about this some days ago. And also
I had to say something, though her writing and language are better... Anyway here
you are.

The point is for us teachers to work in a nice and quiet atmosphere. Also
because that’s the only way our students can work and learn... The big test is
around the corner – as Angela Watson wrote – but we should do something else
about classroom management.

For example we could again set some basic
conducting rules, while at the same time we try to do our best and carry on
with the syllabus or course outline. We may spend and consume some time by
adjusting some nice behavior among our students but it’s worth the try anyway.

Of
course we can remember this point for next school year. Next I’m copying some
notes I wrote some days ago about this point. I think it’s the best I can do
now because I’m toot tired to post after this term lessons... Here you are.

Setting
some classroom management rules can be okay. This is perfect at the beginning
of the year. The point is setting some conducting rules, and when the students
have learned them, you can proceed and continue with the lessons-contents,
which you should have already started.

Some more strict but mild-at-the-same-time
relationship between the students and their teacher should have already been
set. But if we’re like now, in the middle of the school year, what to do?

The
situation can be so in-need-of-rules that you could start anew. But the big
test can be around the corner and you could be consuming so much instructional
time… Try to balance both things: training the students for the big test and
spend some time for instructing them.

Some of these ideas are by Angela Watson:
I didn’t read her whole article about this point but you can find about her at the
link below.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

The ultimate
teachers’ work? Educating our dear students, although sometimes they may bother
us teachers...

And educating in values, as you know or may know. Our work is not
merely teaching math or helping them get and gain a communicative competence in
English as a foreign language. Thus our educating and teaching are a subsidiary
work to their parents and families.

I say families because the elder siblings
may educate too. However this is a work or duty of their parents, as this work
or duty, based in love, is the primeval parents’ one. And we teachers help.

Their parents don’t have to know about all the subjects their children have to
learn about: math, sciences, English as a foreign language, history,
literature, the mother language’s linguistics, sport, religion, the foundations
of our civilization, other cultures, fine arts, etc.

And while we’re teaching those
subjects we also educate our students, for example at working hard and getting
appropriate studying techniques and learning strategies. - By the way, I mentioned religion: the first educators here also are the parents, who will be educators of their children as children of God. / Photo from: Happily-ever-after-family-walking-along-the-road-hand-in-hand
Stacey Hanlon Photography

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

On post #3147 I wrote
about beauty as something educative, and that’s okay.

We have to teach our
students to appreciate and esteem beauty, and also have to educate their
sensitivity. That’s quite important. And we can achieve that goal by showing
them beautiful sceneries, and taking them to excursions to the countryside, the
mountain, the forest, a river…

In that way we’ll be educating them with values
that make us all more human and humane. As well little by little, for instance
in the subject of history, or as a topic within the English-language subject,
we can try to teach them how to value and understand some nude, other
sculptures and paintings. In that case – nudes – we will explain to our
students how well ancient Grecians esteemed beauty, and about the beauty canon
they had and why they had it.

Alike those people educated their boys and young
men to follow what’s beautiful, and subsequently were able to distinguish between
what’s good and what’s wicked to do. Girls were educated in another way, as
wives and mothers, in that ancient time – obviously it was a different time and
women didn’t work out; their mentality was pretty different, as you know. Anyway wives and mothers is great!

What
I mean is that young people were educated from a canon of beauty and good. They had values. /
Photo from: Nike or Victory of Samothrake in great Louvre museum, Paris

Monday, April 3, 2017

I’ve discovered
that beauty can be very educative, well, better said, I found it so quite many
years ago.

An activity I implement in my lessons is describing pictures for
example of beautiful sceneries and landscapes, from magazines. They’re both
interesting for describing them in the target language, which is English, and
also to make our lessons more human and humane.

A picture of a scenery is kind
of a window that’s open to nature, often beautiful nature.

After one student
has described it he may show the picture to his classmates, who have been
trying to imagine the landscape as the first student was telling what he could
see.

Our students, I’ve observed, need to learn from beauty, and watching
landscapes can be very instructive. Also we could project a video and pause at
sceneries to describe by one student, and the rest of his classmates can add
something else, from what they can see.

As well they could describe what one or
several people are doing, from a picture or image too. In this latter case they
would have to use present continuous in English. This activity is nice also
because they can fit in different grades of achieving by our students – some of
them can say more than others or we can show different difficulty levels of
pictures or moving images. It’s a nice activity and my students like it pretty
much. / Photo from: mending-wall Asher Days WordPress com

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Have you ever seen
yourself teaching? Maybe with a video, maybe not. It is interesting. But you
may not like what you look. Doesn’t matter too much, if you’re trying to do
your best and trying to improve your teaching.

Has any of your students taught
a lesson of the school subject you teach? In my case I’ve seen it. Twice.

Once
a student of one of my classes wanted to teach a lesson, an English lesson. And
I let him proceed. In this case I liked what he did – he could be some 12 years
old. He was smart and got it, yes he got it. Obviously he imitated me in some
things I usually do. That was ok.

But one other time another student, some 14
years, imitated me in one of my lessons! He went to the front of the classroom
and he imitated the things I do! And I didn’t like it too much. I was at the
back of the classroom and he was the teacher.

This was some twenty years ago,
and I was starting my career as a teacher or close to that. Another teacher was
in the classroom: it was him who had told this student to go to the chalkboard
and imitate my gestures, ways of addressing the students, trying to keep them
silent…

It was a nice joke by that teacher anyway, a good colleague and friend of mine, and he
carried out this fake and mock on my behalf, for my sake. And well, you know, I
accepted it, as a joke, as I said. I got nothing against that kid, a naughty
but smart one. That was okay. That teacher and I had a small laugh, and also
that kid, a nice one.

Try it yourself, and have a small laugh with your
students, if you think that’ll be good for rapport with them. It can help
create a nice chemistry with your students, but you decide, ultimately. / Photo
from: Paw My. The child on the picture is kind of similar to the cat, isn’t it?